In 17th century, the pirates raid villages. Villages each had their defensive wall.

In Qing dynasty, chinese garrison stationed in now Kowloon city to defend possible invaders, presumably western powers. Forts were built. One can still see the cannons used at the time in the museum.

After opium wars , uk fortified hk, positioned artillery nests at east-west ends of the harbors, not to guard aganist Qing, but other colonial powers.

In WWII, Japanese invades from north.

In the 60s, during cultural revolution, british was worried that the red guards or Chinese military will retake hk. Mines were layed in part of the border. Tanks were stationed....

Now, Chinese garrison has air, land and sea assets to defend whoever the next invaders. During Hu's visit, we can see we even have air-defense weapn. I dont know who will invade HK. But I can see the PLA take it seriously.

Of course, garrison in hk whether uk or chinese also take on other duties, like internal security, search&rescue and disaster relief.

No, they got a MOUT training facility in HK for that; and there's no way they'd conduct trainings in real urban areas - if a routine change of guard convoy, vehicles with no MG mounted can cause panic and irresponsible media fan the flame, what kind of panic it would cause if they do train in "real world"?

As for the "who'd invade HK" question...if what sparks your question is this exercise, then perhaps it not meant for invaders but "potential insurgents". Probably not enough to get air by CNN or BBC, but recently some high profile mainland officials are voicing concerns over "separatist movements" in HK, most profiling by those who, since last year, begin to brandish the Union Jack and HK colonial era colors in many anti-government protests, plus displaying slogans with explicit intent to insult mainland Chinese in various demonstrations...local news media outlets deemed this exercise, announced at such time, meant to sent a "message" to anyone in HK who actually think PRC would tolerate their monkey acts.

No, they got a MOUT training facility in HK for that; and there's no way they'd conduct trainings in real urban areas - if a routine change of guard convoy, vehicles with no MG mounted can cause panic and irresponsible media fan the flame, what kind of panic it would cause if they do train in "real world"?

As for the "who'd invade HK" question...if what sparks your question is this exercise, then perhaps it not meant for invaders but "potential insurgents". Probably not enough to get air by CNN or BBC, but recently some high profile mainland officials are voicing concerns over "separatist movements" in HK, most profiling by those who, since last year, begin to brandish the Union Jack and HK colonial era colors in many anti-government protests, plus displaying slogans with explicit intent to insult mainland Chinese in various demonstrations...local news media outlets deemed this exercise, announced at such time, meant to sent a "message" to anyone in HK who actually think PRC would tolerate their monkey acts.

Well-said, and it gets dumb. Originally it's just some people trolling around during the protests, but CCP took it too seriously. Sometimes CCP really suck at identifying something that's a real threat vs people being stupid...and of course taking it overly serious to the point of needing to respond with a military drill to deliver your point just make you look even more retarded than the trolls. CCP should know, the fact that the Brits definitely won't step in even if we hand our asses back to them should be enough of an evidence nothing will ever happen. And not to mention most HK people disagree with an independent Hong Kong separate from the China. We still consider ourselves Chinese..it's just we always say "we're from Hong Kong/Hong Kong people" because we're from this place where freedom and justice exists.

I do wonder if in times of war, what does Hong Kong pose as in terms of target value, cuz Imo I can only see this city neutral like Singapore and Switzerland,

C'mon, you do remember that Lincoln and JFK died by assassin's bullet, right? The US Secret Service and FBI have no luxury to take things like that lightly. Arrest that girl and grill her for 48 hours should sweat some common sense into her.

Well-said, and it gets dumb. Originally it's just some people trolling around during the protests, but CCP took it too seriously. Sometimes CCP really suck at identifying something that's a real threat vs people being stupid...and of course taking it overly serious to the point of needing to respond with a military drill to deliver your point just make you look even more retarded than the trolls. CCP should know, the fact that the Brits definitely won't step in even if we hand our asses back to them should be enough of an evidence nothing will ever happen. And not to mention most HK people disagree with an independent Hong Kong separate from the China. We still consider ourselves Chinese..it's just we always say "we're from Hong Kong/Hong Kong people" because we're from this place where freedom and justice exists.

Dumb? Nah, it gets dumber by the minute...during today's weekly public forum (live televised by local TV) the topic is none other than this, what got it extra "hot" were 2 of the guests, one is a mid-level mainland official that deal with China-Hong Kong affairs, and the other is one of those "separatist movement" demonstration organizers. Things got heated up when the official condemned the demonstrators for their "acts of high treason", HK should legislate against such acts and the offenders' citizenship should be revoked; the "separatist movement" demonstration organizer trolled back by brandishing his passport and other documents, demanding the official to have his citizenship revoke on the spot...

The thing that most people in HK might not realized is, ever since the Qin Dynasty, central-ruling government is a goal that all subsequent dynasties pursues if not enact with almost single-minded brutality, the only exception would be when the central government was too weak to enforce such control...those dumbass in HK are doing nothing short of openly challenging this golden rule.

While I'd never expect those weenies could actually do anything more than verbally insult mainland China, but I'm afraid if nobody plug up those pieholes mainland gov't would've no choice but to take it seriously and decided to snuff such "insurrection" at the bud, in short HK as a whole will be burned by the monkey acts of those idiots, because we "need to respect their freedom of speech".

I doubt the same weenies would care enough to go voting if they were in some other democratic countries.

They'd defend their acts of non-participation because "the election system in HK isn't fair and non-universal suffrage", but judging the level of turn-outs in the last general election, probably the most hotly contested one since the handover, those weenies knows only whining and insulting Beijing.

They just have no idea the traditional train-of-thought for Beijing is that most of the time they adopt the "worst case scenario" portfolio, so this is not just mid-level mainland official shouting into the bullhorn, those decision makers have read about it and don't think it's funny, not necessary that they've made up their mind (we'll know after the change-of-guard in November), but even if Beijing do "misjudge" the situation as something as severe as "separatist movement" is alive and strong in HK, then it's all the "insurgents" faults, because the kind of slogan they display could only lead to one conclusion.

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